1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a software update method and, more particularly, to a software update method for a display device.
2. Description of the Related Art
As technology advances, various small, thin, lightweight, power saving and portable smart information appliances such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) or notebook computers have been widely used in our daily life, and display devices disposed therein play a very important role as human-machine interfaces. The display device requires a software program installed therein to control the operation of the display device. In the design of the display device, the designer must code and test the software program for the display device repeatedly to obtain a release version of the software program which can control the operation of the display device. Even after the display device is sold in the market, the designer may further provide one or more update versions of the software program to add new functions or to solve compatibility problems to improve the usability or performance of the display device.
Traditionally, the update of the software program installed in the display device needs to use a burning device electrically coupled between a computer device and the display device to transfer the update version of the software program stored in the computer device to replace or patch the old release version of the software program installed in the display device. When a user finds that the display device cannot work well or wants to add new functions to the display device, owing to no burning device, the user cannot perform the update of the software program of the display device by himself or herself. Accordingly, the user has to send the display device to the manufacturer or service station so that it not only increases the service cost of the manufacturer but also makes the user inconvenient. Moreover, the burning device is more complex in operations and requires constant maintenance.
Furthermore, when the computer device updates the software program of the display device, the computer device should be electrically coupled to another display device such as a computer monitor to assist in displaying the update process of the software program of the computer device to increase the complexity and inconvenience in updating the software program. Therefore, there is a need for a display device whereby the user can perform the update of the software program of the display device by himself or herself, and the complexity in updating the software program of the display device can be reduced.